What very few people talk about is eliminating taxes on diesel fuel. That would lower costs and increase margins which would result in companies being able to pay more. Trucking is on razor thin margins as it is, cutting taxes would be another way to make “raising wages” possible. Trucking is so competitive that most companies would go out of business if they raised wages 200-300%. The world is governed by reality, not wishes and hopes and mandates dictated by people that have little understanding of the economics of logistics — or the economics of anything for that matter.
"Markets don’t work that way. You raise wages, trucking gets more expensive and demand drops, causing all sorts of unintended consequences." YES! That is EXACTLY how markets work! These "unintended" consequences you speak of are the whole beauty of the free market. When you get a shortage of one good, the price of the good increase. This sends a price signal out in the rest of the economy which means more resources gets allocated to produce more of that good. That is the so called "unintended" consequences you speak of.
"Trucking is so competitive that most companies would go out of business if they raised wages 200-300%." No, because they could raise prices. If all the competition got 200-300% higher wages, they would also be forced to raise prices, which means you are competing on a higher price.
Take McDonalds in my native Norway. They pay their workers about $25 per hour. How can they pay that without raising prices a lot? Yes they do have much higher prices than the US. But how can they then compete? They can because everybody else has higher prices. This isn't rocket science.
"The world is governed by reality, not wishes and hopes and mandates dictated by people that have little understanding of the economics of logistics — or the economics of anything for that matter."
Exactly, in a functioning market economy, prices of a good for which there is a shortage such as truck drivers, the price would go up. When prices don't go up, it suggests it is not a functioning free market. There could be many reasons for that. One would be e.g. collusion between companies or weak competition.
Oh no, a thousand times no. Individual trucks hauling goods around the world is awful to the environment (and to the roads) and if the pollution was somehow priced in you’d be scared. And that is the real cost - we just ignore a decent chunk of it and leave it to the next generations as debt.
The last thing we want is to encourage even more of this practice. Companies would immediately use the tax break as a competitive advantage and consumers would come to simply expect lower prices. We can’t keep destroying the planet like this.
In shorter-term economics, the roads are a MUCH bigger factor. Tractor-trailer trucks do an enormous amount of damage to the roads, due to physics (I believe the factor is related to weight to the 4th power). Basically, if we didn't have trucks like those, we wouldn't be spending even a fraction as much on road upkeep. Road maintenance costs governments a LOT of money, so it only makes perfect sense to have commercial trucking and diesel fuel taxes to pay for it.
Really, what they should be doing is making it easier for stuff to be shipped by train, and then only trucked the last few miles.
A lot more respect has to be thrown onto the driver's life. Trash truck drivers still go home at the end of the day. Yes, it's a shitty job too. But the biggest benefit, you go home at the end of the day.
Long haul, yea, you CAN'T get that luxury. But especially with these big companies, they can figure a 1-2 week on, 1 week off system. That would vastly improve the situation. Is that perfect? No. Needs some work. Sure. But 3-4 days home for every 30, and you have to argue and fight for that. No. Fuck that. But that'd take gov regulation to have happen so it's an even playing field for everyone. The trucking companies make really good margins for only paying most guys $0.45 a mile and charge over $5 a mile to the customer. The England bros (the owners) had 6 high end cars delivered to the main yard in Utah on one day. They looked like kids on Christmas Day. This was during the "Hard times due to high diesel prices and all of us had to do our part to save money for the company." Look, I'm a capitalist, from beginning to end. But don't piss in my pocket and tell me it's raining. At first I thought it was weird for them to deliver them there, but I later found out they store a few of their cars on the side of the HQ since it has 24/7 protection.
There are other things that can be done, but I'm calling it done reminiscing about those shitty months for HN.
There are a lot of truck drivers out there, they have families and friends. And I hope that there are unions.
I refuse to be cynical about the “unchangeability” of laws because that makes me powerless. Better go for it and fail until it’s done.
Such legislation is not impossible.
How many gap t-shirts does an 18-wheeler transport? Would it be insanely expensive to reduce the profit on each shirt with $0.05 and pay the driver double?
Is this really unthinkable to “economists”? Is maximizing profit for the few who don’t really need it the only unchange-able variable in this equation?
The owners probably make a little less.
You must be new to capitalism. Snark aside, I doubt most trucking companies will raise wages if their margins are increased. Most likely it will result in bonuses for management.
Of course there’s a shortage. If pay was 200-300% higher and drivers could afford to work 2/3 of the time and get adequate rest/healing/family time, the shortage probably would not be so severe.